What I always do
by qwertysweetea
Summary: "Like my little touch with the television screens? -JM". This wasn't the first time he'd fallen into this line of conversation with Moriarty since his death; he was often the one to text him, call him, materialise in his flat when there was nobody else occupying his mind. Set between TST and TLD, Season 4. Warnings inside.


Based on a RP. Moriarty really likes messing with Sherlock's head.  
 **Warning:** Drug use, references to murder, references to suicide

* * *

 _Like my little touch with the television screens? -JM_  
 _Of course. -SH_  
 _Figured out how I did it yet? -JM_  
The reply was delayed. When it finally pinged through, the brutal honesty caught Moriarty a little off guard.  
 _You know I haven't. -SH_  
 _Well that's no fun now, is it? -JM_  
 _Not really. -SH_  
 _Oh, come on. You aren't even trying. -JM_  
 _You're right. -SH_  
 _Jesus Christ, did you actually scrabble your brain in the fall or have you just become more boring in my absence? -JM_  
 _I'm not playing this game anymore. -SH_  
 _That's very inconsiderate of you. You know fully well you're the only person in the world who can any way match me. -JM_  
 _Not when I'm high. -SH_  
 _What are you on? Cocaine? -JM_  
 _Heroin. -SH_  
 _How very low class of you -JM_  
 _You think so? Cocaine doesn't feel as good as this. -SH_  
 _None of them feel good. They just feel better than rotting. -JM_  
 _That's very true. It takes the edge off of being alive, doesn't it? -SH_  
 _So does murder. I don't see you doing that. -JM_  
 _And I don't see you getting high. -SH_  
Jim looked down at his phone, counting out the beats it took for the other to work up the nerve to press send. One. Two. Three. Four. Fi- Ping. The drugs must have been making him really sluggish.  
 _Joining me or not? -SH_  
 _What makes you think you can trust me? -JM_  
 _If you were going to kill me I think you'd want me clean and sober. -SH_  
 _Obviously. -JM_  
 _Then I'm safe. I'm in Baker Street if you're coming, but I assume you knew that. -SH_  
 _I'm in the cafe below you. Nice sandwiches. Terrible tea. -JM_  
 _Come upstairs. -SH_

Jim stood from his seat and tucked his phone in his jacket pocket. Without a word and barely a sound he made his way out and to the next door along. He pushed it open... unlocked, and headed up to the detective's sitting room, also unlocked.

It didn't make a difference. If anyone wanted to get to him enough they wouldn't let a locked door stop them. He knew that… only the stupid and the desperate thought that an inch by half inch piece of metal could save them from the monsters that came after them. Sherlock was neither and, however docile and however vulnerable, he never would be.

The door gave way with very little pressure. The room was dim and stank of metallic burning, and Sherlock was on the sofa, arm trailing off of the edge with belt still tight around his arm. The syringe laying empty on the floor.

He looked up as though the door had creaked to let him know of the others presence. "I did" he said after a moment of attempting to lift his head to look at Jim, going back to staring at the ceiling.

"You did?" Jim smiled, taking a couple of steps into the room, kicking the syringe to send it spinning across the floor. He shoved his hands in his pockets, slowly and gradually strolling the length of the room, eyes scanning over the walls. "Quite cute really, wasn't it?"

At that a little frown came over Sherlock's face "I was talking about the screens... I did miss you. Missed the challenge. Magnussen was interesting, but not really inventive... He didn't gift wrap puzzles the way you did... And I still can't figure out how you did it... I watched you shoot yourself and I still don't get it."

Same conversation, same confession; it sound completely empty, like he'd repeated it that much it's lost meaning. No matter how much he wanted to believe Moriarty was really there he didn't, not really. This wasn't the first time he'd fallen into this line of conversation with Moriarty since his death; he was often the one to text, to call, to materialise in his flat when there was nobody else occupying his mind.

It's easy to spew out all the painful truths you'd rather forget than risk getting out, to a dead man: He had missed him. He didn't understand why he missed him. He didn't understand how he did it. And he didn't understand why he had this unbearable need to find out how.

"You've gone all sentimental. It doesn't suit you." Jim stated very matter-of-factly before sitting himself down in Sherlock's usual chair. "You're all slow and emotional, like a normal person. You're so much better when you're pretending you don't have a heart, playing the sociopath. You do it so well."

"I do, don't I? I think John must've infected me with his disease of humanity." he huffed a bit, attempting again to look at Moriarty and again failing, "Tell me how you did it..."

Jim smiled, and allowing his eyes to trail back up the wall and over the ceiling he made a point of ignoring the demand of the other. Practically speaking over him, he added "Ahh yes, that's what happens when you have a live-in one, especially one who is so moral. Who needs someone to make them feel? To save them? There is much more value in someone who will fire the bullet, take the dirt off your hands, than there is in one who will jump in front of it and leave you to clean up the mess."

That wasn't right. Moriarty didn't make casual conversation. After a few moments of silence his thoughts finally caught up with him. He turned his head lethargically. "I suppose you have one then? A live-in one? To kill for you, keep your hands clean?"

"What? No." Jim looked almost offended at the suggestion. He threw a leg over the arm of the chair and leant his head back into the cushions. "No. Not a live-in one. I'm not stupid enough to have him living in my house. But I suppose you could consider him the Watson to my Holmes in some ways. Army man, three terms, gambling addiction, stupid in an adorable way. Loyal. Sexual tension you can't do anything about. Perhaps I'll introduce you sometime."

"We've already met. Mycroft had Moran for a while, trying to get information out of him."

Jim sat up slightly at that, his subtle smile dropping from his lips slightly at the confirmation of what had become of his right-hand man while he was away. "I hope you treated him nicely. You know what happens to people who mistreat my pets."

"I'm under the assumption he was treated very well, before his trip to Sherrinford."

Sherlock looked far too smug about it amongst the drowsiness, and for that reason Jim found it hard to bare any anger in the attempt to get to him on any level. Anything that showed the former man was in there brought back in a small, dwindling way the renewal of their games. He made no reply, just started at the detective.

And Sherlock was smug, he felt it. He made a note that he had no realistic hope of remembering that this is what had been missing. He'd never managed to get Moriarty completely right before. He forgot the sass, and gentleness, and the little flitters of anger. He forget the unpredictability.

Sherlock rolled his eyes a bit, "This is all non-essential anyway, you shot yourself. You shouldn't be alive. You can't be. You aren't." He sighed a bit, going back to staring at the ceiling.

"I could tell you, you know? I could tell you every detail but it won't make a difference." Jim sighed, swinging his leg back round onto the floor and pushing himself forwards, perched on the edge of the chair now. He dug his elbows into his own thighs and lent that little bit more forward, hands cupping his face "You won't remember it. Even if you do, you'll wake from your drug induced daze, me nowhere in sight, and resign yourself to dreaming about me again. You won't believe yourself when you tell yourself the truth. How James Moriarty got off the roof alive."

"So tell me... It won't matter if I know if I'm just going to forget it when I'm sober." Sherlock slowly got up and moved over to Jim. Sitting in John's chair he mimicked the others actions as best he could, knees on his thighs unsteady from the weakness in his arms. When Moriarty didn't reply with anything but a smirk the irritability got too much for Sherlock. "I need to know!"

Jim looked amused, smile becoming that little bit wider before carrying on in the same gentle tone, "How many times have you run through this scenario in your mind? Sitting opposite me, listening intently. I'm willing to bet you've listened to me tell you every alternative." At that he made his two fingers into a gun and pressed it sharply into his own temple, twisting them, hard enough to hurt, "It's in there, Sherlock. How can Moriarty survive a bullet through the roof of his mouth?" then he moved them and pressed them to the roof of his own mouth.

"The shot must've been fake... The noise... Naturally it would've caused me to blink, but that wouldn't give you enough time to do anything..." he frowned; shaking his head, his hands dug into his hair and he ruffled it like it would help clear the disorientation "It doesn't make sense...I can't do this like this. Not when I'm coming down."

"The drugs won't make me more real, Sherlock. They won't make me say more." He replied, slightly harsher than previously.

Sherlock shook his head, lurching forward in his chair with voice raised as much as he could manage. "God, you're not even alive! It doesn't matter to you anymore! For once just tell me the truth!"

"Think Sherlock!" Jim shouted, launching himself up and fell forward, hands landing hard on the arms of the other's chair. "Think Sherlock, think what's the one think I do in your dreams? The one think I have done whenever your drug-stewed mind has come up with a suggestion of my survival, however idiotic? I bet you've never managed to get me right; all compliant, and romantic, soft. Why am I suddenly so much more lifelike now? Use your brain for once!"

"I don't know!" Sherlock shouted back, startled by the sudden outburst. He pushed his way, weakly and unsteady past Moriarty and to the kitchen, arms stretched out balance himself.

"Survived the fall and now you're gonna die to stop yourself from crashing, how poetic of you." He almost hissed, watching Sherlock stumble his way into the kitchen. "I'm not going to stop you, but I will promise you this: if you do I won't give you the key to finding out how I did it."

Sherlock paused; his hand, which had been grasping frantically in the drawer, froze and visibly relaxed, letting go of whatever he had a hold of. He didn't look up, just asked "Since when do you care? You've never cared."

"I've invested millions of pounds, years of effort and an extraordinary amount of manpower into our little games. I have a huge investment in you Sherlock, and I don't fancy my investment being found face down on a kitchen floor with blood and vomit in his hair unless I was the one to put him there."

Slowly his hand slid from the drawer and came to drop by his side. "So you're planning something then?" he asked, raising an eyebrow as he closed the drawer, finally looking over at Jim.

"Got you interested now?"

He took another step towards him unsteady but completely sure in movement. "Tell me."

He smiled in reply, taking a step away from him. "You shouldn't be asking how James Moriarty survived."

Perhaps the more relevant question is why?" He stated after a moment, taking another step towards him.

"Not even that." He paused a moment, and then bust out into a fit of giggles. "Oh my God, it's so simple and you still can't see it! It's not how, it's not why!"

Sherlock frowned at him, "Wh-"

A realisation came over his face so similar to how it had back before the drugs had numbed it. "It's not how James Moriarty made it off the roof. It's not why James Moriarty made it off the roof. It's..."

Jim waited, taking slow steps backwards towards the door.

Sherlock remained fixed where he was, staring at the same space that the other had been occupying. "Which..." he muttered.

* * *

Thanks for reading.


End file.
